To put this in to perspective, one client ran BI4 on Linux with the upper memory threshold set to 8Gb…imagine that 
It worked quite nicely as well…
Nick Daniels 
(BOB member since 2002-08-15)
Yes, it is.
Marek Chladny 
(BOB member since 2003-11-27)
Charting in BI4 is much much stronger than XI3 Webi or Deski.
The ability to turn backgrounds transparent etc comes in handy now and then when overlaying charts on top of each other.
The lack of Freehand SQL and Stored Proceedures is a big downer for us
leejh1 (BOB member since 2013-11-20)
The lack of stored procedure is not a big problem for us.
The lack of Freehand SQL is a big problem though - very useful and I’ll keep a watching brief as to when this is introduced. I was always taught that it’s not an upgrade if you’re taking functionality away that someone still needs. 
Saving charts in Excel as graphic items. Which complete moron thought that would be a good idea? 
Good job we’ve got a decent SDK guy here who can sort things like that out for the automated corporate reports that have to be “just so” before being published.
As it stands, I will have to recommend that we do not upgrade. I don’t care about 64-bit performance if I’m going to be downgrading to 2-bit functionality. 
Freehand SQL comes in 2014!
http://scn.sap.com/community/business-intelligence/blog/2013/09/22/bi41-overview-emea-webcast-summary-highlights
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
SAP said they are working on adding Freehand SQL, but it’ll be 16-20 months in the making.
We scrapped the 4.0 SP6 version and updated to 4.1 SP1 Patch 3.
Merge Edit is back and several other issues are resolved. Still plenty of bugs and the migration tool, UMT, is a real challenge and not very fault tolerant. For us, it takes about 72 hours to run and many things that go wrong occur late in the full upgrade run. We have tried more than 15 runs with only 2 successful ones. We have 400,000 objects with a lot of Users/Groups which slow it down.
One odd one is that the Search Folders that categorize the results appear to be in German despite the selection of English in the Platform Search application properties. Any ideas?
pcgeekus 
(BOB member since 2003-10-16)
In BO BI there is no any integration with maps (Geo-Analytic)
===–===
in other BI products.
bmvrus (BOB member since 2011-05-08)
Is it possible for us to update the vote? looks like the poll exists for a long time and maybe someone already change their mind 
summoner 
(BOB member since 2008-12-18)
Hi pcgeekus!
you told the migration runs 72 hours. Could you be so kind and tell me how many objects you have in bi4.1?
Our System has about 110.000 objects and the migration runs 15 hours.
Still we have some issues open like the indexing of our installation. it seems that the scheduled crawling always indexing ALL objects not only the selected.
You have the same thing?
Also some strange things in viewing webi reports. some Administrators see all export options some only see the export to CSV option!?
Does anyone have an idea why!?
SAP is not able to reproduce the problem…
Tomy
aix 7.1
50 GB RAM
Cluster system with 4 cores/cluster
TomSnizer (BOB member since 2013-01-29)
Moderator note:
Tomy, please do not hijack this topic. Either continue in a discussion (if there is one) or create a new topic where you will discuss the problem.
Thank you.
Marek Chladny (BOB member since 2003-11-27)
Did anyone check Gartner BI Magic Quadrant 2014? https://bobj-board.org/t/218218
Please let us know how the tool can improve ability of execute, which seems to contradict the votes here. Thanks. 
summoner (BOB member since 2008-12-18)
Not sure if that’s a serious question or not…
“Ability to Execute” is a measure of the vendor’s ability to implement its vision, not of the product’s ability to do what it’s advertised to do (though that would be an interesting metric, too).
Worth noting:
Though it goes on to say that customers’ experience with 4.1 is much better.
joepeters (BOB member since 2002-08-29)
We’re in the process of migrating to 4.1 and it’s not been too bad so far.
The main problems are getting used to the new client tools and figuring out the revised calculation contexts (which seem to work differently in some cases).
From Gartner’s report, the criteria include “Product/Service” section.
“Vendors’ ability to implement its vision” should refer to 17 capabilities mentioned in report, while “Quality” should refer to the quality of product.
How long do you get responses from SAP support after you submit a ticket?
summoner (BOB member since 2008-12-18)
To the developer who designed the Merged Dimensions interface in BI4.0
jemstar 
(BOB member since 2006-03-30)
Agreed!
Redesigned, more like it. It was much better in XI 3.1.
Dave Rathbun (BOB member since 2002-06-06)
Perhaps I can bill SAP for the hours that I have wasted this week deleting and re-creating merged dimensions?
jemstar (BOB member since 2006-03-30)
Mildly improved in 4.1 SP2, as they can be amended without deletion, however the interface is still rubbish.
I wonder whether the coders working on Webi have ever tried doing any report development in the tool 
.
Mak 1 (BOB member since 2005-01-06)
Some of this development takes place in Dublin…(where I live)
I would gladly sit with them for a day to avoid this sort of…well…rubbish…
jemstar (BOB member since 2006-03-30)
This is a very interesting thread.
I cant comment on the older versions of BusinessObjects because my first exposure to it was in January 2012 when the only approved version for new installs was BI4.0 SP2. As you can appreciate with that release (which should never have made it outside Test) as the starting point, my opinion of this product and SAP (as the company that develops it) is not complimentary.
In the 2 years I have been involved with this I can honestly say it is the worst piece of software I have ever had the misfortune of having to deal with. Over the years you gain an understanding of when something is not quite right and I have continually been puzzled by some of the missing and/or broken functionality I come across with BusinessObjects. Some of the issues raised by other in this thread complaining that functionality which was present in older version but is now missing has made me realise that my suspicions were correct. i.e. it wasnt the case that I was not understanding how the product is supposed to function but the case that functionality which should have been there is now broken (or removed). This new (to me) knowledge combined with conversations I have had via web meeting with the dev/test team in India has led me to realise that the inherent problems must be due to the software lifecycle design methodology employed by SAP.
A good example of this is a bug we are currently experiencing after our upgrade to BI4.1 SP2 where a Web intelligence document (.wid) that is based on a query (or queries) which employ Context loses that Context (even though you can still see it ticked in the Query Properties panel). The result of this bug is that you need to manually intervene with the report (at query level) to get it to return data. OK not such a massive bug and not every .wid will require a context BUT this is exactly the same issue we have experienced before and which was subsequently addressed in BI4.0 SP5 (from the top of my head).
So it is an example of a regression bug. In 2014 there is no excuse for a regression bug there has been no excuse for a regression bug this century really but it seems SAP software development is actually following some methodology from the 60s/70s ? And remember this is a product that has been in GLOBAL release now for OVER 2 YEARS and is still suffering from regression bugs. Normally you would expect a product to be mature by this stage and the only problems would be related to new functionality. Not the same stuff that appears in SAP support forum discussions from 3, 4 or 7 years ago.
Have a look at the release notes for any support pack or patch and you will get a feel that they are not really addressing the problems at source but are just applying band aid fixes. e.g. the release notes for the upcoming BI4.1 SP3 is a 107 page long PDF. Ill repeat that this is a >2 year old product and the next support pack has 107 pages (with a dozen or so issues per page) of fixes to acknowledged problems. Anyone who has ever been involved with software development will know that you cannot release that many fixes without introducing new ones especially with the existing track record of non-regression testing that SAP has demonstrated so well. So unless SAP change their approach to the product development methodologies, this product will forever be vulnerable to these sorts of issues.
Neither I, as an individual, or we, as a company, have the resources to be continually testing, working-around, re-testing and re-working again because of the galactic ineptitude of the SAP release process. Needless to say we are looking at alternatives.
For those who can’t escape due to previously committed costs - you have my sympathies
Good luck.
anderson.council (BOB member since 2012-02-13)